AfriGeneas Genealogy and History Forum Archive 2

Surname "Dickerson" and whites who "pass"

My research supports the fact that if 5-10 million Black Americans had migrated to white census status by 1920,they have 15 million descendants today. That figure is consistent with a geneticist's estimate that 23% of white Americans have some degree of Black lineage on these shores.

Look at this:

Could the Dickerson Winn Foundation have been involved in genealogical cover-up for
African Americans who had reached positions of power? I checked out the frequency of the
Dickerson name. The percentage of the U.S. population with the last name "Dickerson" is
approximately .01%, or one-hundredth of one percent. In other words, about one in 10,000
people have the last name "Dickerson." I decided to find out if any powerful people in U.S.
history had Dickersons in their immediate family. I picked President Harding to look into,
because he is widely rumored to have been of African American descent. He came to power
about the same time as J. Edgar Hoover.

- PHOEBE DICKERSON -- I couldn't believe it. I swear I didn't know this before I started
looking. I looked for Dickerson only because George Ott worked for a Dickerson foundation.
Here's what I found: Warren G. Harding's mother's name was Phoebe Dickerson. She descended from abolitionists in Ohio; her family was involved in the Underground Railroad,and like John McDonogh of New Orleans, they were wealthy. So now we have two possible links to powerful people in Washington DC, both guys rumored to be of mixed blood, both
may be associated with rich abolitionists. Warren G. Harding's father was said to have been
one-quarter African American. The chances of finding a Dickerson right where I was looking
were one in 10,000.

More Dickersons: J. Edgar Hoover had a great-great grandmother with the last name of Dickerson. His father's first name was Dickerson. His brother's first name was Dickerson. And George Ott, genealogist, worked for a Dickerson foundation. One in 10,000 Americans are Dickersons. Coincidence?

- A SUPREME COURT JUSTICE? I decided to take a look at other positions of power in Washington D.C. How about the Supreme Court? I found a web page with pictures of everySupreme Court Justice since the country began. [pictures of Supreme Court Justices] Istarted around the 1860s and worked forward. I wasn't paying attention to dates, just clicked each picture and wrote down the ones that looked like they coulda beena brotha. I found two: Morrison Waite and Harold H. Burton. Harold Burton was a contemporary of J. Edgar Hoover, so I checked him out.

- HEY CUZ ... So I ran a search on Harold Burton. This page popped up, and caught my eye right away: Rise to Power -- it says, among other things: "According to Harold Hitz Burton, a cousin of [J. Edgar] Hoover's -- who eventually became a Supreme Court justice -- Edgar's uncle, William Hitz, offered to help Edgar get a draft exempt position in the Justice Department." Well, the plot thickens. I also found that Harold H. Burton and J. Edgar
Hoover lived next door to each other, or in the same house, as children (although Harold Burton's official biography says he grew up in Boston, and that his father was a dean at M.I.T.)

Both Hoover and Burton make a big deal out of their "Swiss" ancestry in their bios, both say it is on their mother's side. But in the family photo, Hoover's mother looks distinctly mulatto. It reminded me that I met a woman at the National Archives while I was researching this. She looked as snowy white as can be. She said her family had always heard their ancestor came from Europe, but she just couldn't track it down. Finally she did -- the ancestor was a black slave, not a European!